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WWE Cutting Ties with Older Fans

I have been reading books buy guys who have been around since the territory days. Okay, because I know many of the fans that might be looking for blogs about WWE may be young so I am going to give a very brief history lesson about pro wrestling. Before the 1980’s the professional wrestling world was broken up into territories that had many different companies usually controlled by one promoter. Then it was Vince McMahon Jr. That decided he was going to start a company and take over the industry. In doing this he was breaking one major rule in Pro Wrestling of the day: never intrude on someone else’s territory. This brought an end to the territory system and a rise of the wrestling companies. While I think this was good for a little bit. It gave fans around the world to see guys like Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Andre the Giant along with tons of legends of the sport. But as these legends started to come to the end of their career, something happened. They left a void. Sure, new performers were coming to the forefront. These guys knew how to wrestle, but they didn’t have what the legends had, someone to learn from. Sure, guys like Ric Flair, Sting, Hulk Hogan, and a few others stuck around to kind of show the way for the young guys, but when the game has changed from what they grew up in. The new guys no longer had to worry about the stresses that the “old timers” had to worry about. So, the professional wrestling business has changed.

Having said all of this, the WWE has been pushing a storyline that is actually talking about the end of an era. For once, I actually agree with the WWE. I really do look at the Undertaker v. HHH match at WrestleMania 28 tonight to be an end of an era match. These guys have put their bodies on the line every night for years. I just hope that the guys in the back are watching tonight as these two giants of the sport have it out for possibly the last time. In a way it breaks this wrestling fans heart to see this match happen because I know that after tonight the WWE will have crossed a line that they may not be able to come back from. They are either going to let HHH or Undertaker or both retire, or they are going to have a string of WrestleMania matches between these two men that will be like shooting a dead horse. There really will not be a way to bring these men back for a nightly or even monthly grind. It really is like watching the end of the WWE that I been a fan of for many many years.